The Transfiguration of Jesus: Seeing the Light
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
February 26, 2006
Mark 9: 2-9
A colleague shares this story: “I go to a lot of museums, but one California Sunday afternoon, something happened to me in an art museum that does not happen very often. And yet, because it happened to me once, in that art museum, I will keep going to art museums, hoping that the fire might strike again.
“I was in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. Upon entering, my eyes fell upon a van Gogh. It was an olive tree, or perhaps a sycamore, a painting by the master that I had never seen. The tree was all aflame, with rich, thick colors. It seemed to lean toward me; it seemed to kind of shout, a great glorious hymn of praise. I stood there, utterly transfixed. It was as if van Gogh had seen that tree for me, as if he had peeled away the outer layer that covers the natural world in order to expose the innermost reality of that world. Or had he set aflame the natural so that I could see the supernatural? I found it completely amazing.”
He concludes, “It was just a painting. It was just an ordinary day. I had seen something that was beyond seeing. I had learned something beyond knowing. It was not the sort of seeing that I usually do, not the sort of knowing that usually passes for knowledge.” “Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves…”
I wonder if some of our youth and young adults, even adults, who have found Camp Cazadero to be a special place might identify with this story, told by another pastor. “It’s not much of a pond. Less than an acre I would guess. It’s been there a long time at the church camp at Craig Springs, and looks like it could use a good dredging. It hadn’t even been in use for anything until fifteen years ago when some folks undertook the task of replacing the rotting, ant-filled logs on the shore with benches. That’s when it became a worship area again.
“So one night, the last night of Senior High Camp, all the camp was gathered at the pond for the week’s closing communion service. And that’s when she saw it. There’s a cross on the other side of the pond. She says she was looking at the cross while the invitation to communion was being given. And she saw what looked like the figure of a person on that cross. She leaned over to the person next to her and asked, ‘Do you see anything on the cross over there?’ ‘No, I don’t,’ came the reply. But she saw it. And now, every time she goes to Craig Springs, she invites people to go to the pond with her – she likes to go at night – and she tells them the story. Because that’s when she decided she wanted to confess her faith and be baptized. Because that’s when she says she understood what it was all about.”
Says the pastor, “I was there. But like her friend, I didn’t see it. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t something, or someone, on the cross. So for the rest of her life, that pond will be a sacred space. And it will also be sacred for all of us who heard her story.” “And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.”
I remember when my sister, Sharon, was dying from cancer. I visited her at her home. She was now spending all her time in bed…it couldn’t be long now. What a painful time it was. I don’t allow myself to think about it very often. But there is an image that lingers in my mind and heart, and as sad as it is, it is also strangely hopeful for me. I remember Sharon just staring – staring up toward the ceiling. She really wasn’t engaging us in conversation much any more. But as she gazed up, she said that she could see our grandmother – Ma – who had died several years before. I have never been what you might call a mystic and I’ve never had mystical experiences. Much too practical for that! How could she really see our dead grandmother? Probably just hallucinating, chemical changes in the brain and all that. Sure, that’s what it was. Or was it? Because as I was with my sister in that room, I had this overwhelming sense that the boundaries had become very thin, that the door between this world and the next had cracked open for just a moment, and that the light wasn’t just all on the other side. It lit up this side as well. And I thought, it might be real, she just might be able to see what I cannot see…another reality altogether. “And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus…Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.”
So what do you make of the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration? Certainly it has to be one of the strangest, hardest to understand stories in the New Testament – the light, Moses and Elijah, the voice from heaven. Some have suggested that it is clearly a resurrection story that’s gotten misplaced somehow and appears in the middle of the Gospel. I suppose that could be the case. But I don’t think so. No, I think what we have in this story is what Barbara Brown Taylor calls a “thin space,” a space, much as I experienced in my sister’s room, where the boundaries between this world and the next become very thin.
Nothing in our experience prepares us for what Mark describes here. Nowhere among the notions by which we live our lives is there a category into which the transfiguration of Jesus might fit. I mentioned that I’ve never really seen myself as a mystic, perhaps not even as particularly spiritual. I’m a child of the enlightenment, raised on scientific theory and proofs, facts which can be verified and tested – that’s what is real. But this? It doesn’t fit into any of my normal categories. Jesus on the mountain…did someone get a video of that? I’ll withhold my judgment until I can study the tapes. But what do you do when there are no tapes? In the words of Patrick Wilson, a Presbyterian pastor in Virginia, “On the mountaintop, time evaporates like mist before the dawning of a great glory. This is not just one more story among many. This is not just another moment following in the orderly sequence of events. Here on the mountaintop, time is abandoned for a moment of eternity.”
So often, as rationally trained preacher, when I work with a text and I think about preaching on that text, I want to be able to tell you what it means, to explain it, to squeeze out all possible implications for our lives. But I’m not sure I can do that here and I’m not sure I even want to. Perhaps this is a text we just need to allow to wash over us, a text for us to relish, to enjoy, and to wonder at the glory of it. And I believe this is also a text that asks us…are we ready for glimpses of the eternal in our lives? Are we open to hints of transcendence all around us? Reflecting on this text and on life, Frederick Buechner says, “It is as strange a scene as there is in the Gospels. It was the holiness of the man shining through his humanness, his face so afire that they were almost blinded by it. Even with us something like that happens once in a while. The face of a man walking his child in the park, of a woman picking peas in the garden…Every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it’s almost beyond bearing.”
On the mountain, Jesus was transfigured, his garments were gleaming white, and a light shone from him brighter than the light of the sun. His disciples, who had walked with him on all those dusty roads, fell on their knees, overwhelmed with wonder. Then there was the voice from heaven and they worshiped. Yes, this text is about Jesus. As the veil between the present and the future, the human and the divine, is pulled back, we see Jesus in his full glory – God’s chosen One, the Christ, the Lord of Life. But, as Buechner recognizes, there is something more here…much, much more. Does this text describe a vision of something supernatural, something extraordinary, or could it be a vision of the ordinary as God intends it to be? Could it be that here we are given a glimpse of the world, of reality, as it truly is, a reality absolutely filled with God, with God’s presence shining forth, not only in the face of Christ, but in all our faces?
A man losing himself in a van Gogh, a girl seeing a figure on the cross at church camp, me sitting with my sister as she seemingly peers through the veil, Jesus’ face shining with a heavenly light. Are these experiences beyond reality or are they true reality finally breaking through – breaking through the anesthetizing routine of the everyday?
No, I am not a mystic and don’t perceive myself as particularly spiritual, but this strange story of Jesus’ Transfiguration really does touch me in a deep place. There is an uncontainable fire here that resists easy explanation or dismissal. As one colleague says, this story is about, “lassoing a wave, holding a burning coal in your hand, putting out to sea in the middle of a hurricane.” Which is to say, what we meet here is a reality beyond the explainable, certifiable, reasonable reality we are so comfortable with.
“And he was transfigured before them…” Let us pray that someday, as we stumble through life or even through a Sunday worship service, we might be granted such a moment of wonder. Pray that the beauty of God might break through to us, opening our eyes to a new reality shining all around and through us. Pray that we might be taken up the mountain where the fire is lit, the veil removed, the light shines, and we find ourselves crying out, “Lord, Lord, it is good that we should be here.”